Who Should Have Access to Police Body Camera Footage? Technology is on the rise and so is police brutality, but with one we may be able to remedy the other. Police body cameras have been in use in certain police departments across America since 2012. Ever since the controversial death of Mr. Michael Brown the idea of body cameras has exploded into a legal race for control over videos that don 't yet exist. There are a spectrum of views regarding the public’s access to these videos which the LA Times eloquently sums up in their article “When it comes to police body cameras, the public can 't be kept in the dark.” In this article the LA Times lays down this bottom line: “police agencies should not have carte blanche to decide whether these recordings
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The LA Times offered the incredibly astute observation that “While it’s distasteful to think about that footage showing up on YouTube, important decisions about who gets to see body camera video should not be made by grieving family members.” (LA Times) The flaw in this bill is pointed out perfectly in this sentence. This is the grim side of the future. As more and more of our world gets videotaped and recorded the ugly side of the world gets a proportionate amount of screen time. As unfortunate as it is there is no shortage of death recorded on the internet. There is no point in blocking out the only death-sensitive videos that could actually help the world. Those who could be emotionally harmed by these events should not be subjected to them, but these videos have proven to be one of the most useful tools that the police departments have ever put into use. These videos could easily be used to condemn the killer of a police officer in any of these cases. The biggest thing that this bill can do is let a cop-killer walk out of custody when there is video proof of the killing. This should not stand as an acting
The LA Times offered the incredibly astute observation that “While it’s distasteful to think about that footage showing up on YouTube, important decisions about who gets to see body camera video should not be made by grieving family members.” (LA Times) The flaw in this bill is pointed out perfectly in this sentence. This is the grim side of the future. As more and more of our world gets videotaped and recorded the ugly side of the world gets a proportionate amount of screen time. As unfortunate as it is there is no shortage of death recorded on the internet. There is no point in blocking out the only death-sensitive videos that could actually help the world. Those who could be emotionally harmed by these events should not be subjected to them, but these videos have proven to be one of the most useful tools that the police departments have ever put into use. These videos could easily be used to condemn the killer of a police officer in any of these cases. The biggest thing that this bill can do is let a cop-killer walk out of custody when there is video proof of the killing. This should not stand as an acting